Service Delivery Area: Benefits
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Human-Centered Design Making the Case for Human-Centered Design in Government
Human-centered design is a problem-solving method that puts people at the center of the problem and aims to design solutions that address the needs of the people. Embracing such design methods in government is imperative to finding solutions that work for the people.
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Project Redesign: Pandemic Unemployment and the Social Safety Net
The 33 stories in this collection are short, journalistic reports from interviews with living experts about the experiences of Americans trying to apply for unemployment and other benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Human-Centered Design Introducing a new digital application for health care at VA
Less than 10% of applications for VA health care are submitted digitally. This article describes how the U.S. Digital Service partnered with the Health Eligibility Center to change that, making it possible for anyone with an internet connection to apply anytime, anywhere, from any device.
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Procurement Software Update Required: COVID-19 Exposes Need for Federal Investments in Technology (Virtual Hearing)
House Committee on the Budget virtual hearing regarding the importance of federal investments in technology and software updates during COVID-19.
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Recommendations to Set Path for Reform at the Employment Development Department
To better serve workers who have experienced job loss during the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Gavin Newsom announced a strike team charged with creating a blueprint for improvements at the Employment Development Department (EDD). In this report, the Strike Team outlines its recommendations and suggested next steps for the EDD to address the backlog and improve on future processing of unemployment claims.
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Policy Six Recommendations for Implementing the Next Stimulus Package
The US Digital response partnered with dozens of states, counties, and cities to support them in using and tracking CARES Act grants. This article presents six lessons learned from their work to help governments better assist residents, particularly small businesses and low-income communities.
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A state-by-state breakdown of failures in unemployment systems across the US during the pandemic
Business Insider rounded up 35 states that struggled with giving out unemployment benefits during the pandemic. Issues included backlogs, delayed payments, payments sent to fraudsters, and poor communication between the agency and laid-off workers. In alphabetical order by state, they provide a roundup of many states' struggles to give unemployment benefits to jobless Americans.Â
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Policy Analysis A Tsunami of Volatility: The Impact of the Design and Implementation of CARES Act Supplemental Unemployment Benefits on Lower-Income Households
While CARES Act benefits themselves have been critical to households, their design and implementation have led to more uncertainty and volatility for lower-income households. This report discusses the financial resilience strategies families used to manage gaps before benefits arrived, in addition to providing recommendations for how benefits can be better designed in the future to fit the financial lives of lower-income households.
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Policy A Public Transformed? Welfare Reform as Policy Feedback
This article analyzes the strategic use of public policy as a tool for reshaping public opinion. Though progressive revisionists in the 1990s argued that reforming welfare could produce a public more willing to invest in anti-poverty efforts, welfare reform in the 1990s did little to shift public opinion. This study investigates the general conditions under which mass feedback effects should be viewed as more or less likely.
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Can States Finally Fix Their Unemployment Systems?
Though the economy is rebounding, it is still necessary for states to reform their unemployment systems to provide relief to millions of Americans, as many sectors are still slow to recover.
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Procurement Default to Open
This article discusses the various benefits of publicly-funded open-source software. These benefits include fairness and transparency, economic stimulus, and support of the Federal Source Code Policy Agenda.
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How Well Insured are Job Losers? Efficacy of the Public Safety Net
An extensive literature in economics documents large and persistent declines in earnings following involuntary job loss. Though Unemployment Insurance provides the largest buffer against lost income, due to the structure of the program, the neediest are less-well insured (in terms of dollars transferred and percentage of lost earnings replaced) compared to middle and higher income job losers. This has important implications in light of the historic number of job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic.